Maeve Binchy

“I don't have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turn into confident ducks.”

“Nobody is ordinary if you know where to look.”

“The biggest influence on my books was the fact that I had worked in a newspaper for so long. In a daily paper, you learn to write very quickly; there is no time to sit and brood about what you are going to say.”

“I'm getting better, happier, and nicer as I grow older, so I would be terrific in a couple of hundred years time.”

“I didn't get excited by weight loss, and since I was already happy being fat, I couldn't see the point of it all. I'm 6 ft. and weigh about 18 st. or 19 st., but weighing myself is not something I do with much pleasure.”

“I have an irregular heartbeat, so that means a fair amount of medication - and I have blood pressure pills, too, but no vitamins or supplements.”

“All I ever wanted to do is to write stories that people will enjoy and feel at home with.”

“Women who start out as ugly ducklings don't become beautiful swans. What they mainly become is confident ducks. They take charge of their lives.”

“When I was being brought up, we weren't allowed to wallow in self-pity, which was a thoroughly good thing. We were all fine and healthy because that was what we were told to be.”

“I'll understand if you don't want me. But I will be heartbroken. You are all I ever dreamed of and hoped for. You are much, much more. Please know that I didn't think I was mean-minded. But I realize I am. I don't want you to put your arms around me and say it's all right, that you forgive me. I want you to be sure that you do, and my love for you will last as long as I live. I can see no lightness, no humour, no joke to make. I just hope that we will be able to go back to when we had laughter, and the world was coloured, not black and white and grey. I am so sorry for hurting you. I could inflict all kinds of pain on myself, but it would not take back any I gave to you. - David Power”

“I live in Ireland near the sea, only one mile from where I grew up - that's good, since I've known many of my neighbours for between 50-60 years. Gordon and I play chess every day, and we are both equally bad. We play chatty, over-talkative bad bridge with friends every week.”

“My mother hoped I would meet a nice doctor or barrister or accountant who would marry me and take me to live in what is now called Fashionable Dublin Four. But she felt that this was a vain hope. I was a bit loud to make a nice professional wife, and anyway, I was too keen on spending my holidays in far flung places to meet any of these people.”

“Never mind money; the gifts of time and skill call into being the richest marketplace in the world.”

“An English journalist called Michael Viney told me when I was 25, that I would write well if I cared a lot what I was writing about. That worked. I went home that day and wrote about parents not understanding their children as well as we teachers did, and it was published the very next week.”

“I have great family and good friends; the stories I told became popular, and people all over the world bought them.”

“I've had a good life, full of more success and happiness than I ever expected.”

“You don't wear all your jewellery at once. You're much more believable if you talk in your own voice.”

“I have been lucky enough to travel a lot, meet great people in many lands. I have liked almost everyone I met along the way.”

“We asked our friends and relations to lend us their children, and, because we lived in London, children loved to come and stay for their half-term holidays.”

“I do realize that I am a popular writer who people buy to take on vacation. I'm an escapist kind of writer.”